Please, Lord. Don’t put me behind a paywall.

Today is game day at my establishment, so I don’t have a lot of time to chew the fat with you this morning. We’re gonna go out there this afternoon and sell about a billion dollars worth of product to the guys who have the money. Maybe two billion. Wish us luck.

My point is that as we go off to battle, I like to be armed with as much information as possible. So I went to a couple of sites I like to visit to see what’s going on in the world. You don’t want to say “Nice day!” to a guy in the oil business when one of his rigs is missing. You don’t want to say, “How’s it going?” to a guy from Toyota, ever, pretty much. At least not now.

At any rate, I gave up when I hit two — count ’em, two — paywalls. I saw a very interesting article on something or other, clicked the link and WHAM. Paywall. Register. Sign in. Authenticate myself. I had neither the time nor the inclination. Next I went to a destination that tells me what I like to hear, politically. CRUNCH. Face first into the paywall. I thought, “Bleep it.” Now I’m going to tell you about it and get going.

There are circumstances under which I’m more than willing to pay for a commodity. Paper towels. Spreadable cheese. A piece of research I can get nowhere else on the dangers of not changing your socks. But the idea of registering myself and logging in every time I want to get the weather or a recipe or the random musings of somebody like me… I don’t think so.

Live free or die! Well… maybe not die. Just, you know, go elsewhere. Yeah. I like that.

Today is game day at my establishment, so I don’t have a lot of time to chew the fat with you this morning. We’re gonna go out there this afternoon and sell about a billion dollars worth of product to the guys who have the money. Maybe two billion. Wish us luck.

My point is that as we go off to battle, I like to be armed with as much information as possible. So I went to a couple of sites I like to visit to see what’s going on in the world. You don’t want to say “Nice day!” to a guy in the oil business when one of his rigs is missing. You don’t want to say, “How’s it going?” to a guy from Toyota, ever, pretty much. At least not now.

At any rate, I gave up when I hit two — count ’em, two — paywalls. I saw a very interesting article on something or other, clicked the link and WHAM. Paywall. Register. Sign in. Authenticate myself. I had neither the time nor the inclination. Next I went to a destination that tells me what I like to hear, politically. CRUNCH. Face first into the paywall. I thought, “Bleep it.” Now I’m going to tell you about it and get going.

There are circumstances under which I’m more than willing to pay for a commodity. Paper towels. Spreadable cheese. A piece of research I can get nowhere else on the dangers of not changing your socks. But the idea of registering myself and logging in every time I want to get the weather or a recipe or the random musings of somebody like me… I don’t think so.

Live free or die! Well… maybe not die. Just, you know, go elsewhere. Yeah. I like that.